How to Organize Recipes and Cookbooks

You've got recipe boxes full of family favorites, folders of torn out
pages from food magazines, newspaper clippings and a computer of
downloaded recipes from your go-to cooking site. How can you make
sense of it all? While there is creative satisfaction in thumbing through
your collection--not to mention the emotional tug from seeing
Grandma's handwriting on her famous cookie recipe--it's time to
bring this conglomeration to order.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Preserve your handwritten family recipes, which may become heirlooms for generations to come, by laminating them. This is an inexpensive way to protect against drips and torn edges.

2. Sort all your recipes into categories, such as appetizers, salads, side dishes, meat, fish, poultry, pasta, vegetarian entre'es and desserts. Throw out any recipes that are incomplete or illegible or that have lost their appeal.

3. Invest in large three-ring binders that will fit your recipes. Insert subject dividers labeled with your categories and plastic page protectors that will hold your recipes (two per page, one for the front and one for the back).

4. Refine the categories in your recipe binders according to how you cook: For example, if you're vegetarian there's no need for a meat section. If you've got a sweet tooth, divide your dessert recipes into cookies, cakes, pies and tarts. If you entertain, make a section for cocktails and hors d'oeuvres.

5. Tackle your recipe cards: Instead of jamming them into a card file, add them to your binder. Get clear page inserts that accommodate index cards (these will fit standard-size recipe cards) or use double-sided tape to attach cards to a piece of paper, then slide the paper into a page protector and add it to your folder.

6. Digitize your collection with recipe software if you have the time and energy. You'll need to input all your recipes by hand (unless you already have some saved to your computer), but you'll be able to easily search your collection, export shopping lists, create weekly menus and run nutritional analysis. Check out programs such as Cook's Palate (cookspalate.com), LivingCookbook.com and AccuChef.com.

7. Clean up your cookbooks. Arrange them by topic (Italian, soups, desserts) instead of by author or title. Donate the books you don't use. When you try new recipes, mark the book with notes ("add olive oil last" or "too dry") that will help you in the future. See 51 Organize Your Bookshelves.

Tips & Warnings

• As an alternative to the three-ring binder, use photo albums with self-adhesive pages to store your recipes. The downside is they're slightly more expensive than binders and typically won't hold as many recipes. An accordion file will hold plenty of recipes, but it can get messy and bulky.
• Store a few of the reference cookbooks you use most often (The Joy of Cooking, for example, or The New Basics) on a shelf in your kitchen. If you're short on space, tuck away the rest of your cookbooks in a den or bookcase for the next time you need to brainstorm or research recipes.
• If you don't have a laminator, use plastic sandwich bags to seal away recipe cards.

[FrazzledNanny]

on 4/20/2009 Thanks for the great article on organizing recipes. I want to make a recipe book for my children so I can pass on our family favorites. 5*

[mikebrittain]

on 7/26/2008 I like to store recipes online, so that I can get to them when I'm at work or even on vacation. See how at http://onetsp.com

on 3/30/2006 To protect a recipe written on an index card, or on regular paper, just slide it into a plastic page or sheet protector (available from most office supply stores). The thicker protectors are more expensive, but will last longer.

Also, to keep your recipe up, out of the mess, try using a piece of blue tack (easily removable adhesive) on a cabinet door. Press the recipe into the blue tack and, voil! Instant recipe holder.

on 1/26/2006 While lamination preserves things from handling and spills in the short term, in the long term laminating greatly adds to the acidity and pretty much guarantees that the object will be destroyed a lot faster than it would have been without it. I have seen lamination literally eat holes in papers it was "protecting" and while some take longer to reach this point than others, it will happen.

A better idea is to make a copies of the paper, in this case a handwritten recipe, onto archival grade paper (available at most copy shops). Put away the original and at least one of the copies for preservation, and then feel free to laminate a photocopy for short term use. While you are making copies, make a few and share them with other family members. At least one family in Hurricane Katrina lost the only known photo of their grandmother when the lone copy was in a house that was destroyed. Distributing copies is insurance that at least some of them will survive the unpredictable.